God Opens a
Channel of Peace

Querido amigo,

Samaritan's Purse has been working in Sudan for decades, and I've been there many times. The country is once again in chaos, devastated by two years of civil war. Millions have fled the fighting.

A failed harvest plus the sudden arrival of 700,000 displaced people has caused catastrophe in Sudan's Kordofan region. Famine has arrived.

Since fighting broke out, we've trucked in well over 22,000 tons of life-saving food to this area to help hundreds of thousands of desperate people. But we knew that this winter's rainy season would make the dirt roads impassable. We prayed for an opening.

That's when God orchestrated conversations between Samaritan's Purse and the governments of Sudan, South Sudan, and the leaders of the SPLM-North, a splinter group. To be clear, these groups have a long history of shedding each other's blood. Nevertheless, by God's grace, they worked with us to create a channel of peace: a protected air bridge from Juba in South Sudan to Kordofan in Sudan.

In the shadow of conflict, they chose to put people first. They agreed to 30 days of flights, a lifeline of aid to reach Sudan with desperately needed food deliveries and airdrops. Then they signed off on another 60 days. We chartered two L100 aircraft and, in total, made 164 relief flights between late last fall and February. Though they could see machine gun nests and anti-aircraft artillery as they landed, not a shot was fired at our planes. Praise God!

Through these efforts, we dropped more than 2,700 tons of maize (corn), beans, and salt—helping to feed over 300,000 people in need. Dozens of Samaritan's Purse staffers worked with hundreds of local men and women to save thousands of lives.

Our decades of faithful work in Sudan and South Sudan gained the trust of all parties, and the Lord used our teams to carry out this life-saving plan. All glory to Him! "Ah, Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You" (Jeremiah 32:17).

Beya and her family are among the many people benefiting from the work of Samaritan's Purse. When fighting erupted around their hometown, she and her husband fled quickly with their eight children. "It was like a fire burning around us, so we had to escape," Beya recounts. They arrived barefoot to a barren area of Kordofan surrounded by thousands of other terrified people, all suddenly forced to rely on the generosity of their host community.

Now that Beya has received relief from our airlifts, her family's situation has improved. They have more food—one or two small meals a day is better than a pot of boiled leaves. They are truly thankful, though their lives remain a constant struggle to survive.

Alongside our food relief, Samaritan's Purse has provided doctors and nurses to two small hospitals in the area where we've cared for over 30,000 people. One hospital is located nine hours from any other care, and neither had a single doctor on staff before our team arrived.

In addition, we're running 14 treatment centers where we care for infants and children suffering from severe and moderate malnutrition. We hospitalize those too sick to eat and provide others with a nutritious peanut paste.

Among those we're helping are a young widow and her two young sons. Omaima's husband was killed, shot through the head, in the conflict. That left her with almost no way to feed her growing children. When her 1-year-old became ill, she walked for hours to bring him to one of our hospitals. He was nothing but skin and bones. We treated him for pneumonia, malaria, and malnutrition. Praise God he's healthy now.

When 2-year-old Ahmed's parents brought him to one of our hospitals, he weighed just 13 pounds. At first, his mom and dad had little hope for their malnourished son, but it wasn't long before his health improved remarkably.

"We thought we might lose him, but now our son is healthy again," his mother, Magula, said. "We are forever grateful to the Samaritan's Purse team for their care and love. Ahmed is now a happy child."

Across Sudan, we work alongside local churches, hundreds of which we've built over the years. Our teams report that 12 new churches have been established in displacement camps in Kordofan, with over 2,600 people hearing the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ through evangelistic programs.

As the roads dry out this spring, we'll keep on delivering desperately needed food and treating the sick in Jesus' Name.

Let's join together in praying for peace, for an end to the food crisis, and for a brighter future for the people of Sudan. "And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'" (Matthew 25:40).

Que Dios te bendiga.

Cordialmente,
Franklin Graham